Morning Wire XX
[0] As legal pressure on Donald Trump continues to ratchet up, newly released audio seems to contradict his claims about his handling of classified documents.
[1] It is highly confidential.
[2] This is a secret info.
[3] What does this mean for Trump's legal defense and how does it affect his standing in the 2024 race?
[4] I'm Daily Wire, editor -in -chief John Bickley, Georgia Howe, is on vacation.
[5] It's Wednesday, June 28th, and this is Morning Wire.
[6] Testimony from two IRS whistleblowers directly conflicts with claims, made by Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding the investigation of Hunter Biden.
[7] A good lawyer would be able to say, well, no, he didn't lie.
[8] He just didn't tell the truth.
[9] What does this mean for Hunter's plea deal?
[10] And the Supreme Court rules that states do not have unlimited power when it comes to making rules regarding federal elections.
[11] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[12] Stay tuned.
[13] We have the news you need to know.
[14] As the criminal case against Donald Trump continues, newly published audio recordings appear to contradict the former president.
[15] claims about alleged classified documents stored at his private residence.
[16] Here to discuss a recording and how it could impact the case against Donald Trump is Daily Wire Senior Editor Cabot Phillips.
[17] Cabot newly released audio and now Trump's response.
[18] What are we looking at or listening to here?
[19] Yeah, on Monday evening, a recording leaked of former President Trump talking to guests at his New Jersey golf club about what he called a, quote, highly confidential military plan regarding Iran.
[20] We'd seen portions of a transcript of this recording in the federal indictment, but this is now our first chance to hear it for ourselves.
[21] and it's getting a lot of tension for good reason.
[22] The two -minute soundbite from 2021 features Trump talking with a number of guests, including a publisher and an author working on a book about former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
[23] The recording starts with the guest criticizing General Mark Millie for saying that he was worried President Trump would attempt to stage a coup.
[24] Trump responds, saying that Millie was essentially hypocrite because he had presented Trump with a plan to attack Iran.
[25] At this point, you can hear him appearing to rustle through papers and presumably show them that plan.
[26] have a big pile of papers.
[27] This thing just came up.
[28] Look.
[29] This was him.
[30] They presented me this.
[31] It's off the record, but they presented me this.
[32] This was him.
[33] All sorts of stuff.
[34] It's pages long.
[35] Seconds later, Trump acknowledges the, quote, secret nature of the documents that he's appearing to show.
[36] So this president, I could have beat less.
[37] No, I can't, you know, but this is like.
[38] Isn't that interesting?
[39] It's so cool.
[40] For his part, Trump gave a statement calling the leaked recordings, quote, interference, saying they prove he did nothing wrong and that the recording is actually a vindication of his claims of innocence.
[41] This is a whole hoax.
[42] I'm covered by the Presidential Records Act.
[43] I'm covered also by the Clinton Sox case.
[44] It's a very important case.
[45] It's law.
[46] And we did absolutely nothing wrong.
[47] So Trump says this isn't just a nothing burger.
[48] It's actually exculpatory.
[49] What does the recording mean for Trump's legal defense?
[50] Well, it's worth noting late Tuesday night, CBS reported that while the transcript of this recording, was included in the 37 -count indictment against Trump.
[51] None of those 37 counts relate to the retention of this specific document, the one on Iran.
[52] But prosecutors will still look to use it as evidence to try and convince a jury that Trump acted recklessly in mishandling classified documents.
[53] The table will also complicate his defense because it appears to contradict claims he made earlier this month.
[54] In an interview with Fox host Brett Bayer, when asked about the transcript of the conversation, Trump said he never showed any classified documents, and then he was simply showing off mementos and news clippings regarding Iran.
[55] That was not a document.
[56] I didn't have a document per se.
[57] There was nothing to declassive.
[58] These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.
[59] I'm just saying what the indictment says.
[60] The recording and the people in the room who testified.
[61] These people are very dishonest people.
[62] They're thugs.
[63] They're thugs.
[64] Now, it's worth noting, while Trump says the audio only records him showing news clippings and articles, the book written by one of the men in the room with Trump that day, does include descriptions of a typewritten document from General Millie.
[65] Prosecutors will certainly look to use that and the recording itself to convince a jury that Trump knew the documents he'd kept and showed others were classified.
[66] Right.
[67] It seems like a logical step there.
[68] Now that it's been a few weeks since the federal indictment, how has the case impacted Trump standing in the 2024 race?
[69] Well, it certainly has not hurt him in the primary contest.
[70] A recent CBS poll showed 76 % of GOP primary voters believe the indictment is politically motivated, and that's led to Trump holding steady in the polls.
[71] While we haven't seen a bump like some had predicted, he is still leading the pack by around 30 points in the RCP polling average, with Ron DeSantis consistently coming in second.
[72] The question now becomes how the case could impact general election voters, specifically independents who he'll need to win over in a potential race against Biden.
[73] 63 % of independents in a recent ABC poll say the charges are very or somewhat serious.
[74] Expect that to be a key issue used against him by Biden and the general Trump does advance.
[75] Yeah, no doubt, team Biden will certainly make sure of that.
[76] Cabot, thanks for reporting.
[77] Any time.
[78] Coming up, IRS whistleblower accounts raised serious questions about the Attorney General's claims.
[79] Bombshell allegations by IRS whistleblowers have raised questions about whether Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress.
[80] The Department of Justice is under pressure to explain serious conflicts between his public statement and whistleblower accounts from Hunter Biden investigators.
[81] Joining us to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce.
[82] Hi, Tim.
[83] So boil this down for us.
[84] What's at issue here with the Justice Department?
[85] apartment in these whistleblower claims?
[86] Well, someone appears to be lying.
[87] Attorney General Garland and IRS whistleblowers have made contradictory claims about the U .S. attorney in Delaware.
[88] Garland said that Weiss had complete independence to pursue the investigation into Hunter Biden, however he liked.
[89] Weiss was given the reins to bring any charges he wanted, wherever he wanted, and was free to pursue leads as he saw fit.
[90] But two IRS whistleblowers have now come forward to claim that that isn't true.
[91] One of them is anonymous, but the other IRS agent Gary Shapley, is a 14 -year veteran of the IRS and led the investigation into Hunter Biden's tax affairs.
[92] So a pretty credible source with a hefty accusation.
[93] Right, very credible.
[94] Now, Weiss is at the center of this, obviously.
[95] What have we heard from him?
[96] Where does he stand?
[97] There's some speculation on that.
[98] Now, Weiss appeared to back up Garland's claims in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
[99] But when Morningwire spoke to the Federalist Margo Cleveland, she said that the letter used suspiciously lawyerly language.
[100] If you read Weiss's letter very carefully, Weiss never says he had absolute authority to make charging decisions.
[101] What he said is, I had absolute authority to make charging decisions within the realm of the federal rules and departmental guideline.
[102] And what is key about that is, under the departmental rules, You need to get the OK of the DOJ tax division.
[103] If it is going to different offices, you need to get the U .S. attorney there to agree to file them.
[104] Cleveland also said that the fact that Weiss sent the letter at all raises questions about Weiss's independence.
[105] The letter was sent under Weiss's name in response to a letter that Jordan had sent to Garland.
[106] So the implication there is that someone at DOJ, said to Weiss, look, we need to put a lid on this.
[107] We need to make clear that you did have authority to charge.
[108] Now, this is a key point because Shappley and the other agents say Weiss is the reason they know Garland isn't being truthful here.
[109] Weiss met with Shappley and a handful of other DOJ and IRS officials in October 2022.
[110] After that meeting, Shappley wrote an email that has now been made public, summarizing what Weiss said.
[111] Shappley wrote at the time, quote, Weiss stated that he is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed.
[112] The email also says the U .S. attorney in D .C. denied Weiss's request to bring charges against Hunter Biden, and the DOJ rejected Weiss's request for special counsel status.
[113] Right.
[114] So again, directly contradicting what Garland said about Weiss's role.
[115] Yeah.
[116] What does this mean for the Hunter Biden plea deal?
[117] Probably not much.
[118] None of the speculation or the contradicting claims will mean much the judge who has to sign off on the agreement.
[119] The issue that could undermine the, the deal, though, is actually Hunter Biden's own attorneys.
[120] Here's what Cleveland said.
[121] You had this other inconsistency that after the charges were filed, we had Weiss saying, basically, our investigations continuing, and you had Hunter Biden's attorney saying, no, we understand the investigation is over.
[122] No attorney is going to tell Hunter Biden to plead guilty unless it resolves the matter.
[123] And if for some reason it comes up that there's still an investigation going on on bribery or other claims, I could see then Biden's attorney is trying to pull him out of the deal.
[124] But to me, that's very unlikely.
[125] Well, there's still plenty of investigating to be done by House Republicans.
[126] We'll see what comes up next.
[127] Tim, thanks for reporting.
[128] Thanks for having me. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court weighed in on how much control state legislatures can have over federal elections in Moore v. Harper.
[129] Joining us to discuss is Jason Sneed, executive director of the Honest Elections Project.
[130] Jason, thanks for joining us.
[131] Can you lay out the details of the Supreme Court case?
[132] Well, this is a case that emerged out of North Carolina.
[133] It's a case dealing with redistricting.
[134] And at bottom, you had a Leslie attorney, Mark Elias, who was bringing a lawsuit essentially asking the then -democratically controlled state Supreme Court of North Carolina to exercise sweeping powers by reading a vague clause in the state's constitution.
[135] that elections shall be free and equal to mean that the Supreme Court could become a Supreme Legislature and not just throw out the maps that had been drawn by the North Carolina Legislature, but actually draw new ones that favored Democrats.
[136] So we had this running legal saga come up out of North Carolina to the U .S. Supreme Court asking a very basic question.
[137] Does Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, when it says that legislatures write the laws that govern federal elections actually mean legislatures or does it mean courts, bureaucrats, and so forth?
[138] So the ruling that we got in the Supreme Court this week says that the courts have a role to play.
[139] They have a function called judicial review where they can vet laws and that state constitutions are relevant to that process.
[140] But the court also said, matter of fact, and for the first time, that there is a federal limit on what state Supreme Courts can do when they are interpreting these election laws.
[141] So you actually have this simultaneous rejection of some of the more extreme readings of Article 1 in Section 4, but you also have this rejection of the argument from the left that state Supreme Courts are eventually unhindered and can do whatever they please.
[142] So overall, I would actually say that the opinion from the court was something of a win for conservatives and constitutionalists, although not quite as strong one as you might hope because it will put limits on the ability of the left to abuse courts as they have done all across the country to rewrite election laws for partisan gain.
[143] Now, the court ruled six three against the North Carolina Republicans that brought this case.
[144] Conservative justices, Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas ruled against it.
[145] What were the opposing arguments here?
[146] Well, the arguments from the majority were essentially that state courts have a function to play in the process and that they can look to state constitutions to help guide them in that process.
[147] On the dissent side, they argued essentially twofold, one that the case itself had been mooted by the actions of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and then on the other hand, that the reasoning of the majority was less than sound.
[148] But nevertheless, I think that you also do have this silver lining in the majority's argument that while state Supreme Courts do have an important role to play, there is a limit.
[149] here, and that courts are indeed courts.
[150] They're not legislature.
[151] So while they do have some role to play in helping to decide what is and is not constitutional election law under state constitutions, they cannot do what the then -democratically controlled North Carolina Supreme Court did, which was essentially read into a vague provision of the state constitution, the power to become lawmakers.
[152] And that's contrary to the democratic spirit of the Constitution of North Carolina.
[153] And I think if you read the ruling today at Morby Harper, it also runs afoul of what we understand the Constitution of the United States to guarantee, which is a Republican form of government where you've got a legislature that legislates and you've got a court that in terms.
[154] Well, separation of powers that shouldn't be violated.
[155] Jason, thanks for joining us.
[156] Thanks.
[157] I appreciate it.
[158] That was Jason Sneed, executive director of the Honest Elections Project.
[159] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[160] Thanks for waking up with us.
[161] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news.
[162] you need to know.